Dine & Dish: Chef Taylor Bailey shares how to play with old recipes

I keep asking myself: How do chefs know if and when to alter an old recipe?

By Ashley Morris StarNews Staff

Chefs have the amazing ability to invent new dishes while reinventing old ones.

I was under the impression that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. My grandmother's old-school chicken casserole ain't broke, and neither is her green bean recipe. But if I wanted to be all "chef-y" how would I go about deconstructing something and putting it back together?

This week I went to one chef in town tasked with preserving the good stuff and reinventing the rest. Chef Taylor Bailey of Hieronymus Seafood, 5035 Market St. in Wilmington, oversees one of the oldest seafood kitchens in town. Should he ever modify the She Crab Soup (the longtime house special of piping hot, hand-picked crab meat) he would be met at the corner of Market Street and New Centre Drive with a mob of pitchfork-carrying beach-goers and locals who have been addicted to it for decades.

"I know better than to change that recipe," Bailey said.

And then there is the Fried Captain's Platter -- local flounder, shrimp, oysters, scallops and clam strips served with hand-cut fries and coleslaw. That and a creamy plate of shrimp and grits are dishes no one needs to deconstruct, stack into a neat pile and top with microgreens or trendy truffle oil. For the record, I think everything edible should be topped with Parmigiano-Reggiano instead of microgreens.

Pay attention, however, to the chalkboards around the restaurant, as those are the places that list Bailey's creative twist on old classics offered up as specials.

For Bailey, old recipes are all about nostalgia. One recipe Hieronymus customers have nostalgia for is the grouper pate. In the 1980s and '90s, customers were greeted at the table with the grouper pate and daily bread.

Today, Bailey has inserted his own techniques into the dish. The result is customers come across something familiar, but new and exciting at the same time.

He is smoking the jowl of tilefish (more sustainable than grouper) indoors by enclosing the meat between hotel pans with smoking wood chips. Then he whips up the tilefish with a house seasoning, cream cheese, mayo and other secret ingredients. The appetizer is plated with grilled ciabatta, olive oil with herbs and a spread of homemade pickled vegetables. Each pickle on the plate takes hours to make -- going from the restaurant's farm in Columbus County to the kitchen at Hieronymus to be canned.

So what is Bailey's secret in playing with an old recipe? He never reads the instructions, just the ingredient list.

"Within the execution, that's where you can get really creative," he said.

He shares about making tuna salad, for example. They all have similar ingredients, but so many tuna salads call for boiled tuna ribs.

"I would rather grill the tuna or cook it on a cast iron just to get that whole other layer of flavor," he said.

In a sense Bailey and other chefs who do this are like hobbyists who take apart radios or computers and put them back together, tinkering with the way everything is set up.

While the grouper pate recipe is under lock and key -- as it should be -- Bailey is dishing out his recipe for Frogmore Stew. He discovered Frogmore in an old Presbyterian cookbook that belonged to his mom. He often has to assure customers the recipe does not contain any frog legs, but got its namesake for the place of origin, Frogmore, South Carolina, near Beaufort. Once again Bailey is putting his smoking craftsmanship to good use, smoking clams and his homemade andouille sausage.

Frogmore Stew

This is an abridged version of the recipe by Bailey to adapt for the home kitchen. In the restaurant, Bailey uses wood fire smoke to cook clams and sausage to add a layer of depth and complexity to the dish. Additionally, the recipe calls for store-bought seafood stock instead of the homemade stock made at the restaurant. Bailey uses a large stock pot for the recipe, but said if home chefs have a cast-iron pan large enough to accommodate the recipe, they should do so, as it will enhance the flavor.